PARIS - In 2012, when Charlie Hebdo editors defied the government's advice and published crude caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad naked and in sexual poses, the French authorities shut down embassies, cultural centers and schools in about 20 countries.

"Is it really sensible or intelligent to pour oil on the fire?" asked Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister at the time.

But Charlie Hebdo's editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, who died in the attack on the paper's offices Wednesday, was not deterred.

Week after week, the small, struggling paper amused and horrified, taking pride in offending one and all and carrying on a venerable European tradition dating to the days of the French Revolution, when satire was used to pillory Marie Antoinette, and later to challenge politicians and the police, bankers and religions of all kinds.

This week's issue was no exception. It featured a mock debate about whether Jesus exists and a black-and-white New Year's greeting card from the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, with the caption, "To your health."

"The French like their satire," said Jean-Marie Charon, a sociologist who studies the news media. "The idea is to be irreverent, that irony and criticism are good things. But it is true that this is perhaps not part of everybody's culture."

In recent years, the editors and cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo had weathered a firebombing, computer hacking and death threats. Charbonnier was included on a list published by the al-Qaida magazine, Inspire, of those "most wanted" for crimes against Islam. But its staff members continued to take on Islam with the same irreverence as they did other religions, a stand that gave them stature among French journalists.

"Charlie Hebdo has always kept its insolence, and since the caricatures crisis it has become a symbol of press independence," said Bruno Patino, director of the journalism school at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, known as Sciences Po. "The debate about caricatures overlapped others in France about freedom of speech and religion. It became the most visible."

The newspaper was born in 1970 after a publication called Hara-Kiri was banned for mocking the death of former President Charles de Gaulle. That prompted its journalists to set up a new weekly, Charlie Hebdo, a reference to its reprint of Charlie Brown cartoons from the United States.

According to some reports in the French news media, the attackers knew the names of their victims. Among the dead were Charbonnier, editor since 2009, and veteran artists Jean Cabut, 76, and Georges Wolinski, 80, who had been involved with the publication since its inception.

While the paper first drew the anger of Muslims by reprinting the Danish cartoons from the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, it went further in 2011, when it temporarily renamed its weekly, "Charia Hebdo," and appointed the Prophet Muhammad as its "editor-in-chief."

In 2012, the French authorities increased the police presence outside the Charlie Hebdo office out of concern about another attack. At the time, one of its journalists, Laurent Léger, said that "in France, we always have the right to write and draw."